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Scientists have proved that human neurons are able to regenerate. Dr Fred Gage and colleagues at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, together with doctors at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden, have shown that new neurons do develop after birth.

This flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which suggests that brain cells, unlike all other cell types, do not reproduce.

Dr Gage's team took postmortem brain tissue from five patients who had received an intravenous injection of …

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